her hand, it would
look like an underhanded attempt to introduce politics into the
_Idler_. It will be better, therefore, to treat the subject in a
philosophic way. The question which the Editors of the _Idler_ ask is,
after all, a question as to the relative advantages of Idealism and
Realism--spelled with the largest kind of capital letters. The small boy
is ordinarily an Idealist, unless, of course, he belongs to the unhappy
class of small boys who have to earn their own living when they ought to
be at play, and who, having no time for dreaming, become Realists of the
most hardened and painful type. In the former case the small boy is
happy, for he lives in a world of his own creation, and for the purpose
of happiness such a world is far better than the actual world. In the
latter case he is generally more or less unhappy, for he is compelled to
see the world as it really is, and he finds it not all nice. The
realistic small boy can have very little true happiness. Fancy M. Zola's
childhood: assuming, of course, that he was then a Realist, which he
probably was not, judging from the fact that he is only a Realist
professionally at the present day. To the childish Zola, life must have
presented itself as a series of human documents. He saw things as they
were, not as a small boy should see them. He could have had no genuine
longings for a life of piracy, for he saw that the pirate, instead of
being a gorgeously-dressed and nobly-chivalrous hero, was only a brutal
ruffian travelling on the road to Execution Dock. Tin soldiers could
have brought him no happiness, for he knew that they were only lifeless
bits of tin, as incapable of fighting as the army of Monaco. It gave him
no pleasure to be dressed in a pasteboard helmet and to wear a tin
sword, for he knew that grown-up people would not mistake him for a
soldier; and that a blue flannel shirt, and a cap with the name of some
frigate on a silk ribbon, would not lead foreigners to believe that he
was a French admiral at the age of seven. He may have found some little
pleasure in playing marbles--not, of course, for the sake of that silly
game, but for the reason that marbles are portable property, and that
the more marbles a boy wins the richer he is--but for all other boyish
diversions he must have felt a profound contempt.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: And doesn't know.]

Beyond all doubt M. Zola would say that he is happier to-day (with
"N